Paraffin or Diesel Heater?

[tkeithlu]

The Dickinson/Newport heaters solve the venting problem by being a sealed system - air comes in the outer of two concentric flexible hoses and exhaust goes out the inner one. The heater is sealed away from cabin air completely. The top is a smooth mushroom that won't snag lines. They're rather pretty, with a window to the flame.

[GoingWalkabout]

Originally Posted by Tampabayfireman

Be careful when considering reverse Ac systems. Heat pumps work by moving warm to cold and back. At a certain water temp they can't produce enough to work.


Sent from my iPhone using Cruisers Sailing Forum

Thanks. After reading more I understand what you are saying. Definitely need a different heating source.

[Snowpetrel]

Better hurry, the place is melting real fast! A cat is a bad choice for that trip, but it has been done before and the peninsular is a pretty easy part of antarctica to sail, at least the banana belt region beween enterprise island and Le maire.

You will have a big erosion of safety due to not being able to push through patches of thicker ice easily. I have sailed there 4 times and there would have been occasions when it would have been "interesting" in a multihull. But with care it could be done safely enough.

From a heating perspective its pretty hard to beat a drip feed diesel heater like the dickenson. Reliable and cosy, on the bigger boat I skippered we ran it pretty much 24/7. We had a webasto type in the foc'sl. This sucked lots of electricity so we only ran it overnight.

If you have a gen set running most of the time ideally you can also tap into some of the waste heat by running a big coolant loop around the boat.

On the Taylors kero heaters, I had one on my first boat. It heated the boat very well (26 foot), and with the 1 inch flue it was safe and also dried out the boat. I wouldnt run it overnight or leave it unattended. If the tank presure got low it occasionally flared up.

[GoingWalkabout]

Originally Posted by Snowpetrel

Better hurry, the place is melting real fast! A cat is a bad choice for that trip, but it has been done before and the peninsular is a pretty easy part of antarctica to sail, at least the banana belt region beween enterprise island and Le maire.

You will have a big erosion of safety due to not being able to push through patches of thicker ice easily. I have sailed there 4 times and there would have been occasions when it would have been "interesting" in a multihull. But with care it could be done safely enough.

From a heating perspective its pretty hard to beat a drip feed diesel heater like the dickenson. Reliable and cosy, on the bigger boat I skippered we ran it pretty much 24/7. We had a webasto type in the foc'sl. This sucked lots of electricity so we only ran it overnight.

If you have a gen set running most of the time ideally you can also tap into some of the waste heat by running a big coolant loop around the boat.

On the Taylors kero heaters, I had one on my first boat. It heated the boat very well (26 foot), and with the 1 inch flue it was safe and also dried out the boat. I wouldnt run it overnight or leave it unattended. If the tank presure got low it occasionally flared up.

Thanks for your comment Snowpetrel. I'm planning on sailing the part of Antarctica off Argentina. Not looking at sailing from one end of Antarctica to the next. I'm an adventurer. But I'm not foolish. I have no plans using my boat as an icebreaker.

Talking about kero heaters, I was shocked to see a portable kerosene heater without a flue in a fully enclosed boat on a sailing video. The poor captain on the video showed signs of serious memory loss. I tried to reach out to the maker of the video to no avail. I am very worried about the captains two little boys sailing with him.

The boat you used for your Antarctic trips. Did it have internal hull insulation? What was the hull made of? If you were kitting out heating for a 45 or 56 multihull what diesel heater configuration would you use?

Given your first hand experience in the deep south ant thoughts from you are very much appreciated.

Regards,
Chaya

[Snowpetrel]

33 foot steel mono down to Cape Denison, Commonweath Bay. Lots of ice there, more now since the Mertz glacier tongue broke off and blocked the whole bay! A catamaran went down there in 98. Look up Ice cat. They didn't quite get into the bay, and had to run off unfortunately. It's much colder down there than the peninsular (near Argentina/chile) we had a taylors diesel drip heater on her that I only used for a few hours to conserve fuel. 45mm polystyrene insulation throughout the cabin, but not the lower hull, so cold feet.

The other boat was an aluminium charter boat I skippered down to the peninsular. It is pretty warm there in summer seldom much below zero deg Celsius, and you could happily get by without any heating, just warm clothes and good insulation.

But any heating makes life much more pleasant, less damp and condensation, and you can dry clothes properly.

If I was setting up a cat without big budget constraints I'd have a dickenson lofoten up in the bridgedeck, (or a Refleks) with the hot plate for cooking and a good drying rack around it for socks and gloves. In each hull I'd have a webasto type heater blowing warm air into the cabins below. Ideally both engines would have an extended coolant loop or some such through the hulls you heat them when you are motoring, maybe with a drying cupboard near each engine blowing hot air through it to dry wet wx gear.

With a setup like this you should be toastie as long as you have the diesel. Just as a comparison we burnt most of our 1000 litres per 24 day trip. But we rushed about a lot and had to make the most of the settled times by moving.

On my little boat I burned about 1/2 of our 300 litres motoring through the pack ice. I kept a lot in reserve for getting back out. The pensular by and large doesn't have a big ice problem. Lots of small broken up brash, but not so dangerous to a metal hulled mono. A foam core cat would have to be much more cautious. A solid grp hull is pretty tough.